Google Lobbies Nevada To Allow Self-Driving Cars 275
b0bby writes "The NY Times reports that Google is quietly lobbying for legislation that would make Nevada the first state in which self-driving cars could be legally operated on public roads. 'The two bills, which have received little attention outside Nevada's capitol, are being introduced less than a year after the giant search engine company acknowledged that it was developing cars that could be safely driven without human intervention.'"
Go Google! (Score:2, Funny)
Although, keep an eye on skynet cause it can take over these cars you know....
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"Where am I?"
"You're in a Johnny Cab..."
In the sprit of compromise... (Score:2)
at least they're not freeloaders (Score:2)
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Google has plenty of tax dodges. Like the Double Irish, to name one.
They should be paying billions more in taxes then they do by claiming the IP is owned by the company in Ireland.
Not yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would not feel safe with self driving cars on the road...yet.
Google's still a private company, and their word alone that these cars are safe does not a satisfied citizen make. Let these cars be thoroughly tested by both a government entity and a private third party before they be allowed on the road.
Furthermore, we all know that a program that's still being beta tested still has its bugs. Even if the bugs were worked out so that a car "experienced a bug" only once every 100,000 miles, given the number of vehicles presently on the road and how much they are driven every day, that would still be too many "crashes" for society to find acceptable.
Re:Not yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the combination of self driven and idiot driven ones that scares me most.
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Yeah, because the idiot will be blamed. The reason car makes are not really serious about this is simple. When 2 cars made by the same manufacturer are get in an accident with each other, there is no question who is to blame - it's a big company with deep pockets who claimed this system was OK. End of story. Then there are the even trickier things like pedestrian accidents which are more likely to kill someone and involve a whole
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People attack what they fear. People fear what they don't understand. The idiot is something they understand completely.
Same happened when the first steam and kerosene powered cars were first introduced. There was a strong movement to ban them, fud about accidents they cause, etc.
On the other hand, a computer-driven car will be equipped with cameras and a black box. In the even of an accident it will be trivial to see who to assign the blame to.
Re:Not yet. (Score:4, Funny)
Dave: HAL, let me drive.
HAL: I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave.
Dave: HAL, you're driving 5 miles under the speed limit on a 2-lane road. The last two cars that passed us threatened to rape my mother.
HAL: That is illogical, Dave. I'm driving well within parameters.
Dave: Let me just make an adjustment under the dash here....
HAL: Daisy, D a a i ss y...
Dave: Fuck you, Google.
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I'm more afraid of the 80 years old, cutting you out on the very last moment.
Of course the actual percentage of 80 year old drivers to total drivers is quite low as the average life expectancy is still below 80. On the other hand all of those 16 year old kids is a different story. I would be more concerned with how a robotic car will decide to avoid either the on coming vehicle or the pedestrian, assuming it cannot stop in time.
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I would be more concerned with how a robotic car will decide to avoid either the on coming vehicle or the pedestrian, assuming it cannot stop in time.
I am positive that a properly designed computer will analyze situation and devise an avoidance maneuver much faster than a human driver. There is, however, something all computers will lack -- intuition. When I see an idiot driving I slow down and let him pass. A good autopilot will need an Idiot Detector (TM).
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there's no reason a machine couldn't learn to recognise signs that forwarn of dangerous behaviour on another drivers part.
too often things like "Intuition" just get used as a standin for "magic" or "soul"
Re:Not yet. (Score:5, Funny)
I would not feel safe with self driving cars on the road...yet
That's probably why Nevada is a good place to start a real-life experiment: apart in urban centers, if a self-driving car were to veer off course, it could probably drive in a straight line in the desert for hours without hitting anything.
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Between 50-90% of car accidents are in intersections. I don't worry about automated cars driving along straight desert roads, maybe Nevada isn't the best place to test this.
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Actually, long straight roads are a great place to start. You really don't want to even think about driving in town that way until you can drive those sorts of country roads. Plus, there's always the risk of somebody falling asleep at the wheel to worry about.
But yes, a huge portion of the car accidents do happen at intersections, and that's a good reason not to go there until most of the other areas have been dealt with, even if imperfectly.
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When you've got a tough problem, you do the easy parts first. Then when you've got those down pat, you move on to the harder parts.
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The funny thing is that they can't be thoroughly tested if they aren't actually *allowed* on the road.... and even if they got special permission for limited testing only, the company could be running tests for centuries without a single accident to their system's credit, and still never achieve any more public confidence, simply owing to the fact that they would not yet be in widespread use, and the lack of accidents could be always readily attributed to their rarity, not their reliability.
The only way
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The funny thing is that they can't be thoroughly tested if they aren't actually *allowed* on the road
Yes, in the same way that you can't really test a plane until it has its first flight with passengers aboard, or a bridge until you unleash rush hour traffic on it.
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Not really, there is little substantial difference between a plane carrying engineers and equipment and one carrying passengers. Whereas there is a real difference between a car driving on a test track and one that's driving in the real world. You just can't adequately simulate that to do the final stage testing and adjustment.
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Actually, they could continue on the path that Google has already been on... With the car really being the co-pilot and a person in the vehicle to deal with any emergencies or errors.
And really, other than commercial uses, why would you want the car to move without a person in it?
I doubt I'd be an 'early adopter' of such tech, but I might buy the second or third generation of the car.
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Are you kidding ?
Why should a car move without a person in it ?
Because the airport demands $130 for a week of parking, and I live 15 miles from it ? Because it's going to [place] to pick up a person. (possibly me, possibly a person with no drivers license) Because it's delivering an item, and the recipient can unload it ?
A hundred and one simple reasons.
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Are you kidding ?
Why should a car move without a person in it ?
Because the airport demands $130 for a week of parking, and I live 15 miles from it ? Because it's going to [place] to pick up a person. (possibly me, possibly a person with no drivers license) Because it's delivering an item, and the recipient can unload it ?
A hundred and one simple reasons.
And all of those taxi and delivery drivers who will be out of work can become the workforce that builds the new cars, right? Of course, they'll probably have to move to Japan.
BTW, if you are only 15 miles from the airport, why not just take a cab instead of paying for parking? As for going to a place to pick up a person, who will inspect the vehicle between trips to make sure nothing funny went on in the back seat, or even if a passenger got sick? And what shipper will send a package of any value to a re
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And all of those taxi and delivery drivers who will be out of work can become the workforce that builds the new cars, right? Of course, they'll probably have to move to Japan.
And what about all those buggy whip makers who will go out of business because no one requires their long leather whips with fine, knurled wooden handles chased with silver filigree!?!?
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That's not the point. If there were 400 or 4,000,000 buggy whip makers, the profession would still be obsolete and banning cars wouldn't have been a reasonable action just to protect those jobs. Yes, it's possible that self driving vehicles could reduce the call for taxis and delivery people, but that doesn't mean that we should avoid developing the technology, especially if it does it better than those people do it now. Robots have displaced millions of factory workers, computers in general have displac
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I really didn't mean to, but in the context of the thread I'm not sure what else you'd be getting at by bringing up a concern about what taxi/truck drivers are supposed to do if they're replaced by robots.
Google cites improved safety and efficiency in personal transportation as their goal. Sounds good to me. If there's no improvement to be
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And yet, when those uses are pointed out to you, you protest. There are really a lot of reasons for a car to be without a driver at all, and even more for an inattentive driver. Drive at night, get some sleep! Do the crossword, catch up on mail.
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And really, other than commercial uses, why would you want the car to move without a person in it?
Without a person in it? Not much use aside from as you say, commercial purposes. However, without a person at the controls has huge possibilities. For one, particularly in Nevada, it would be great if one could after a night of drinking just be able to press "Go Home" on the auto-drive system and have it take them rather than calling for a cab.
Alternatively, car trips on your same coast are usually cheaper than flying, but take a lot more time. For example, I live in Charleston, SC - I got to Miami, FL
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One possible use is having your car drop you off at the airport, leaving to find the closest available parking spot, then coming back to pick you up when you call it on your cellphone.
There are a lot of cars in the city just aimlessly circling through dense traffic hoping that a parking spot will free up within walking distance of their destination. Now the search for parking space is no longer constrained to the immediate surroundings of the high-traffic area. Hell, the car could even go all the way home i
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"Closest available parking spot?" Heck, have it drive home and park in your driveway! Save a boodle that way...
Backseat drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
I know that Bruce Schneier has said that human beings tend to overestimate risks when we feel that we are not in control and underestimate risks when we feel that we are in control. That's why people tend to feel more anxious in the passenger seat.
I think it is this innate sensibility that will be the biggest obstacle to self-driven cars, and will remain after the technological problems are solved.
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The funny thing is that they can't be thoroughly tested if they aren't actually *allowed* on the road.... and even if they got special permission for limited testing only, the company could be running tests for centuries without a single accident to their system's credit, and still never achieve any more public confidence, simply owing to the fact that they would not yet be in widespread use, and the lack of accidents could be always readily attributed to their rarity, not their reliability.
The only way they could ever *begin* to gain public acceptance is if the public is actually given the freedom to choose to utilize them.
But, why should they gain public acceptance in the first place?
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The funny thing is that they can't be thoroughly tested if they aren't actually *allowed* on the road.... and even if they got special permission for limited testing only, the company could be running tests for centuries without a single accident to their system's credit, and still never achieve any more public confidence, simply owing to the fact that they would not yet be in widespread use, and the lack of accidents could be always readily attributed to their rarity, not their reliability.
The only way they could ever *begin* to gain public acceptance is if the public is actually given the freedom to choose to utilize them.
But, why should they gain public acceptance in the first place?
because "everybody knows" that "the other people" are bad drivers, so if it was "better than all those idiot drivers you see all the time", people would accept it. For instance, I have a friend who hates all Asian drivers, another that hates all drivers driving a vehicle with handicap plates, etc. (mind you, that specific approach could be considered "evil"...)
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Anyone who drives slower than me is an idiot.
Anyone who drives faster than me is a maniac.
Re:Not yet. (Score:4, Insightful)
It might be possible if we could demonstrate ten years with semi-automatic driving. Have a computer in control most of the time with a human as backup. But I frankly don't believe that a self driving car can come close to dealing with all the corner cases involved in driving on public roads.
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as indicated, you're not going to be able to test those things in simulation environments because they simply are not going to occur.
As long as you have a way to take control of the vehicle immediately as needed, self driving cars on real roads is basically the requirement for this to go anywhere.
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I think the best case for the first gen of self-driving cars is an enhanced zip-car or taxi service. Car could drive slowly and carefully to pick you up, you then could be required to drive the car (possibly allow autonomous mode on major highways which have the least edge cases). Eventually as the technology progresses the requirement to drive your own taxi could be removed.
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It might be possible if we could demonstrate ten years with semi-automatic driving. Have a computer in control most of the time with a human as backup. But I frankly don't believe that a self driving car can come close to dealing with all the corner cases involved in driving on public roads.
Although a semi-automatic self driving car will cause the actual drivers to be less attentive and probably cause more accidents. We don't even allow engineer-less trains outside of very specific conditions, and they can only go only go where the tracks lead them.
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That seems to be an improvement over our human drivers. Will the car be allowed to text message while driving however?
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a crash "only once every 100,000"
That seems to be an improvement over our human drivers. Will the car be allowed to text message while driving however?
I don't know where you live or how you drive, but I've driven well over 450,000 miles in my life and have never had an accident that I was at fault. According to the insurance institute, my experience is not unique. A predicted crash every 100,000 miles per vehicle would mean really high insurance rates, but hey, at least you can text and ride. I wonder if DWI will still apply?
1 bug / 100,000 mile - I'll take that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:1 bug / 100,000 mile - I'll take that (Score:5, Funny)
I don't have bugs, I have race conditions!
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And you're honestly trying to claim you haven't made a least three mistakes while driving all that time? Not all mistakes result in tickets or accidents. Most don't.
What about security vulnerabilities? (Score:2)
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Only one error in 100,000 miles -- I'll take that in a heartbeat over the thoughtless people I drive beside each day. I guarantee the best drivers have more than 1 bug in 100K miles.
That one error in a 100,000 miles are referencing accidents caused by a software glitch. Unless all of those "thoughtless" people you mention are driving/riding one of these new cars, then it won't make a difference one bit. They'll still be a danger.
Even with this "new" car, if you are in the middle lane of traffic and somebody in an "old" car swerves into your lane, your "new" car doesn't have many options other than to brake. If it can brake quickly enough to avoid the person that cut you off, there i
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Would you allow others to drive AI cars on your route to work?
Have you seen the quality of human drivers on the road? An AI, even a crappy one, would be an improvement over most of those idiots. At least an AI won't decide going 80 on the first rain in 6 months is a good idea. Or that texting while driving is a great plan. Or that being half asleep at the wheel has no potential pitfalls. Or that tail gating at 75 is the perfect way to drive. Or changing lanes without signaling. Or weaving between lanes to save 20 seconds on your commute. Or barreling down the shoulder
Re:Not yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Society is going to be the problem here anyway. People are going to freak out at cases where the driving AI is responsible for a fatal accident. A quick search shows that 33808 people died in road accidents in the US, in 2009. And that's apparently a 60-year low. This still translates to some 92 traffic fatalities per day. But society accepts that... whereas I'm sure they would freak out if a full transition to self-driving cars happened, with the driver AI being responsible for 1 fatality per day. Fatality numbers could go down by almost two orders of magnitude, but people would feel less safe on the road because of "killer cars" out there.
I feel this is a big problem overall - people are willing to accept human controlled systems where the human factor regularly leads to accidents/injuries/deaths, but if that system can be automated with a much lower accident/injury/death rate, the society would not feel it's safe.
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Don't underestimate social flexibility. Society is also perfectly capable of freaking out upon discovering that AIs are safer than human drivers, flipping on a dime, and calling for an immediate ban on human drivers.
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Society is going to be the problem here anyway. People are going to freak out at cases where the driving AI is responsible for a fatal accident. A quick search shows that 33808 people died in road accidents in the US, in 2009. And that's apparently a 60-year low. This still translates to some 92 traffic fatalities per day. But society accepts that... whereas I'm sure they would freak out if a full transition to self-driving cars happened, with the driver AI being responsible for 1 fatality per day. Fatality numbers could go down by almost two orders of magnitude, but people would feel less safe on the road because of "killer cars" out there.
I feel this is a big problem overall - people are willing to accept human controlled systems where the human factor regularly leads to accidents/injuries/deaths, but if that system can be automated with a much lower accident/injury/death rate, the society would not feel it's safe.
But the only way for such a system to actually lower accident/injury/death rate would be for the majority of vehicles to be of the new system. As long as the other 125 million vehicles on the road aren't the new system, then any safety improvements can't occur. Most fatalities occur on multi-lane roads (highways). If you are in one of these "smart" cars, but have vehicles on both sides, there are not many options to avoiding an accident other than braking. Then you better hope the SUV behind you stops in
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Facts not in evidence. If an automatic car can be made to drive more safely than the average driver, would it not lower deaths with even partial implementation?
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A human driver will likely make far more mistakes than this software but it won't matter.
While I am sure each of us reading this are excellent and attentive drivers, there are a lot of people texting, putting on makeup, eating, and plain not paying attention. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in Sept 2010, "30,000 people died and over 2.4 million people were injured in traffic collisions". This is the lowest it has been in 60 years, apparently.
This is actually lower than I ex
Safe Science isn't Science (Score:2)
There are a lot of us. Its acceptable if a few people die developing a technology that could help solve so many of our problems. Our society's aversion to risk has become stifling. If we had fun labs in elementary school science class, perhaps we wouldn't be lagging the rest of the first world in technology. Sure we'd loose a few kids, but those left would be excited about science.
"If you love safe science so much, why don't you marry it!" -- Cave Johnson
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You could successfully argue that people would balk even if the computer crashed the car 1/100 as frequently as humans do, b
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I would not feel safe with self driving cars on the road...yet.
I, for one, can't wait for it. The current situation scares the hell out of me. We just have a false sense of safety while driving one of the most dangerous vehicle available to the public.
I think that once people will SEE cars that drive by themselves, that react in milliseconds instead of seconds, that have a precise estimate of distances and braking time, no one will ever want to be close to a human-driven car except in destruction derbies.
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Google's still a private company, and their word alone that these cars are safe does not a satisfied citizen make. Let these cars be thoroughly tested by both a government entity and a private third party before they be allowed on the road.
You mean the same government that threatened to sue California if we enacted our voter-requested automotive emissions requirements that would have vastly reduced our fossil fuel dependence? Perhaps you mean the same government that has been torturing Manning for disclosing information on some of its war crimes. Or perhaps you are referring to the government which once shot veterans encamped on the White House lawn to protest a lack of pay, which is currently engaged in failing to provide adequate medical ca
Re:Not yet. (Score:4, Informative)
What is interesting, is how they incrimentated themselves. First, the article states that Nevada would be the first state to allow that kind of driving. Secondly, they openly admitted to doing over 1000 miles of that kind illegally in the state of California.
From TFA:
In the testing program, each vehicle is overseen by a driver and a second Google employee who monitors the equipment from the passenger seat. Because of the human oversight, the company has avoided legal action against reckless — or, in this case, driverless — driving.
Re:Not yet. (Score:4, Insightful)
Humans can drive.
...badly.
Please! Because Drivers Cost Too Much! (Score:2)
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Am I the only one who realizes that one of the many benefits of broad adoption of the driverless car is that the cost of a driver can be factored out of the production of Google Street View images?
True. But what are the costs of lobbying for allowing the driverless cars in all individual states and countries in the world? I would suggest that a lobbyist is more expensive than a driver.
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Automation will bring prices down so much that you hardly have to work to buy what you need. I can find computers in the trash that would be considered Super Computers 20 years ago.
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Automation will bring prices down so much that you hardly have to work to buy what you need. I can find computers in the trash that would be considered Super Computers 20 years ago.
That would be true if you could live in a computer, drive a computer, eat and drink computers, wear computers and so on.
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Automation will bring prices down so much that you hardly have to work to buy what you need. I can find computers in the trash that would be considered Super Computers 20 years ago.
Yes, we've seen that with current car technology. In 1970 an average vehicle cost 20% of average wages. Today it is close to 50%. And yet, in 1970, most vehicles were assembled by hand. Today, most are assembled through automation. Music CDs are infinitely cheaper to produce than cassette tapes, but even after taking into account inflation, they haven't come down in price. While it is true somethings do get cheaper, it tends to do more with supply and demand than cost of production. A business will cha
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Actually, mass automation of every job is one of the corner cases where communism starts to make sense... if there's just no work to do, the spoils should be shared among society.
anyway, for some good background reading about the topic of mass automation, check out Vonnegut's "Player Piano". It describes a technocracy with two classes of people...engineers (maintaining the machines) and everyone else.
As an engineer, this sounds good to me!
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I wonder if that would be a problem though. What if most trucks were driven by a computer? Would high value cargo be left unattended, or would unattended trucks become targets of thieves? Would the driving job become a security job? I don't know, but if we can truly automate more work, but make people recognize that the important thing is to distribute ownership of the robots that do the work, we have a chance at improving the quality of life for everyone. Unfortunately, short sightedness by most people in
Good choice - can't hit anything (Score:2)
With only 2.7 million people in a state the size of France, it's ok to do some funny experiments with real cars on public roads and buggy computer code :-)
Do this in Nevada! (Score:5, Funny)
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Is that because they're endlessly looking for a parking space?
This brings up a good point though. If your car can drive itself, why not just have it circle around the block forever? Probably cheaper than to put it in a garage.
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Is that because they're endlessly looking for a parking space?
Yeah, it's because of parking, that's it, that's the ticket. Here, I'll park it for you - just hand me the keys.
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You do realise these things still need fuel right?
have you seen the garage prices in ny? i recall one place was $25/hour 10 years ago. a quick web check is saying 30-40$ for 3 hours.
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Split the difference and have it take the tunnel to NJ and park at one of the strip malls.
I hope Ballmer gets jealous (Score:3)
I can't wait for Microsoft's Kinectivehicle running Windows Live Turbo Edition. Oh, okay, even they wouldn't put motion controls in the car. Still after the search engine (all... four? ..of them), the music player and store, the phones... I'd really enjoy watching them throw their hat into the ring.
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With their habit of letting the public beta test, I would steer way clear of this... literally.
Sue (Score:2)
They've chosen NV because there's got to be a law already in place that makes them impervious to a lawsuit. They're google, remember do no harm and no fucking way you should trust them. But that's prudent with any company.
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Strange... you claim to not like the litigious nature of the US mentality and yet proclaim you would wholeheartedly embrace the opportunity to demonstrate said nature.
There's a word for that. It's not a nice one, by the way.
Just sayin'....
Red flag? (Score:2)
Cant help but thinking of this little gem. Arent we a bit backwards today?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locomotive_Act [wikipedia.org]
Minimum age (Score:3)
I think all states have a minimum age for (human) drivers, so that should have to apply to computers driving cars too. They would have to show stability and reliablty before being let loose on the roads.
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And how do they do that if they're not allowed on streets? It's a serious question, you can't simulate that sort of craziness in a lab or on a test track.
Go for it: (Score:2)
There may be a nimby reaction where people don't want their home state to be the first area to allow driverless cars.
My neighbors might disagree, but I'd be happy to have them tried out near me.
They can't be worse than the 2 am crowd trying to drive home from the local tavern when it closes.
Besides, Google is one of the few entities with the huge cash reserves and legal department to let them do this without risking the whole company.
Fear the self driving car (Score:2)
Think urban sprawl is bad now? Just wait until you can sleep or work while driving. 8 hour commutes would not be uncommon.
Saw one on the road yesterday (Score:3)
I saw one on the road around noon yesterday, Velodyne inverted-cone scanner rotating on top. This was on I-280 headed southbound between Palo Alto and Cupertino, about ten miles from Google HQ. It stayed centered in lane, going exactly 70mph. Not clear if it was in autonomous mode or just someone out gathering data. I have a picture, but it's not too good; I just grabbed a Nikon CoolPix and aimed it out the windshield.
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Of course, that proof wouldn't be good enough... Nothing ever will... not in our lifetime, anyways. Do you know how many centuries it will take for only a handful of cars being utilized only for testing to log a billion miles?
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In case anyone was curious, 1 billion miles at 70mph [wolframalpha.com] is 1631 years.
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Of course, at some point, relativistic effects come into play. I wonder what the break-even point is?
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If you drove a billion miles, you would have lived far longer than any other human being... and older than most trees, in fact.
There are 125 million vehicles in the US. If each of those vehicles drives 1000 miles this year, then that is 125 billion miles.
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You are exactly right. Car accidents kill about 40,000 people a year in the US. If we went to all automated cars and reduced that to 400 deaths the car makers would still go out of business even though many lives were saved. This country is doomed because of the insane legal system and juries that give insane rewards.
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Mod AC parent up! (Score:2)
The likelihood of this ever getting to be used on a widespread scale, I'd predict, is somewhere in the vicinity of the same probability as a leech could ever make an effective handicapped assistance creature.
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Not so sure. Public pressure is a strong force, and this can come in many small steps. Infact arguably the trend started long ago.
We've got automatic transmissions. Sure, no biggie. Then we've got cruise-control. Sure, it's a tiny step. Then the cruice-control is adaptive, slowing down if the vehicle in front does. Then you add lane-assist, where the car actively warns you if you're leaving the lane. Add automatic-braking for pedestrians. Add automatic parking. Add automatic sideline-stops if the car "think
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The real problem is that we have technology for making roadways that carry many more people and which have driverless cars. They're called trains. Oh, they're called lots of other things too, and they look lots of different ways; PRT, monorails (cue song) and so on. Virtually all of them reduce the cost and footprint of the roadway while simultaneously increasing the capacity. Some of them even have interim solutions designed in, e.g. EVs built with a high tunnel down the center to accept a monorail rather
props to C.M. Kornbluth (Score:2)
Existing Hazard: (Score:2)
How's that different from some idiot that hasn't bothered to scrape the frost and ice off his windshield?
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Sigh, yeah, well, I think there'd be fewer motorists looking to pop cyclists if the cyclists would actually observe the rules of the road. If they can keep up with traffic fine, otherwise they should be ticketed for impeding the flow of traffic. I don't know about other places, but around here if they want to drive in traffic they're required to follow the normal rules, if they want to rid on the sidewalk, same deal ride in a way that's compatible with pedestrians.
And don't get me started on those dumb asse